


Dear Fellow Traveller

by Eternal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Hallucinations, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal/pseuds/Eternal
Summary: When Thrawn dies, Pellaeon is forced to pick up the pieces.





	1. Side Pellaeon

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[Translation]Dear Fellow Traveller亲爱的旅人](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780515) by [isaakfvkampfer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isaakfvkampfer/pseuds/isaakfvkampfer)



‘You know what I said about prevaricating, Pellaeon.’ Thrawn warns softly. His hand rests on the tallies of the dead, stacks of personal letters to the families of the dead, personal affairs and unfinished reports that should be written. ‘Putting off the confrontation only makes it worse.’

* * *

The _Chimaera_ ’s walls had fallen – it would never be the unassailable fortress that it had been again under Thrawn’s command. And still the Star Destroyer limped on, with makeshift spot repairs to fix in function what had been externally been broken and to cauterise the damaged parts to make them work again although on the inside they were haemorrhaging.

It had been just under twenty four hours since Bilbringi. In that time the chair had been scrubbed spotless and eyes bounced off it before touching it as if they had encountered an invisible barrier.

‘Sir?’ Ardiff asks for an opinion that he knows that Pellaeon could not give, tentatively touches an arm still covered in Thrawn’s blood from the wrist up. No one has told him to clean up. No one wants to.

‘The injured need the bacta tanks more than the late Grand Admiral.’ He still hadn’t moved from Thrawn’s side, like a limpet attached to a rock in the face of a bone bleaching sun.

‘It’s procedure for the commanding officer’s body to be moved to the bacta tanks, sir.’

‘Why? He’s dead. It’s not like anything will bring him back.’ Pellaeon’s eyes are blank.

Moff Disra, a hologram with gold specks in his irises and an empty hole in his heart was smoothly arguing for the Spaarti cylinders, arguing for Thrawn’s existence to become more immortal than martyrdom.

* * *

As great coincidences went, it was a severe oversight. Somehow, a sublux engine transponder code that did not match any of the signatures in the database had docked with a Star Destroyer. This had in turn allowed the occupant to gain access to the _Chimaera_ ’s antrum somehow and then allow them to waltz across the private ship unbarred and then to enter Pellaeon’s private rooms.

And the person was none other than a war journalist, or so she claimed. Dark brown hair and flashy microcam that had seen better days was secured on a strap around her neck. She also had a profoundly unaccented Basic and the militant dress style of someone who had been a business woman even when the clothes were casual.

There’s something about her that reminds Pellaeon of the HoloNet broadcasts that used to circulate about antique stockmarkets – BUY LOW, SELL HIGH – something something fundamental egalitarian economy of the past. It had never particularly rated high on Coruscant, but Pellaeon had occasionally caught a glimpse amongst Thrawn’s holographic collection and once he’d even walked in on the Grand Admiral - blue arms crossed watching the odd errant show out of the corner of his red eyes.

‘A show about ancient money? Sounds oddly irrelevant.’

‘Never underestimate the importance of information, Pellaeon,’ Thrawn had chided.

So Pellaeon says – ‘ _You’re_ a journalist? I thought you were an economist.’

Her eyes scarper to the side. ‘Well, I was an economist. I was also a stockbroker and a couple of other jobs before that one. Fell on hard times so I suppose I became a war journalist.’

‘A war journalist,’ Pellaeon says, ‘And a dog.’

‘Certainly looks like one,’ Ardiff replied. As they watched, the fur shifted from one way to the next and the great black creature sniffs the air.

‘If you’ll escort her to detention block C I’d be appreciate it Ardiff. I’ve other matters to attend to.’

‘Like the events concerning the _Nemesis_ and the _Liberation_?’ Miss Kapoor inquires gently, as she was gently tugged along by a group of officers.

‘That’s confidential.’ Pellaeon replies.

‘I have my sources. You never know when certain facts might come in relevant in my line of work.’

In the hold of the old ship which toots, the Imperial Officer swears, like a steamboat of a bygone era they discover a shipload of gems which glitter like winter snow and box of the Angel Maker’s redwood whittlings.

* * *

The Grand Admiral was sitting up in the morgue and tickling the dog’s chin when Pellaeon walked in, clearly oblivious to the discomfort of the marble slab. Although only the sheet covered him, he retained the same grave dignity as he did when he was calmly gazing out from his chair.

‘Before the establishment of the Core Worlds, there were many missions that humankind sent out to explore space. Can you guess the first documented one?’

‘Not Corellian for sure.’ Pellaeon haphazards.

‘A dog.’ Thrawn agrees. ‘The space capsule was primitive and it eventually broke down due to the heat. And if it wasn’t the heat that killed the dog, it would have been its decompensated heart because they didn’t have gravity compensators back then or maybe it would have been the lack of food. But do you ever wonder, Pellaeon, what would have happened if the dog had survived?’

Pellaeon shakes his head.

‘Maybe the dog would have stopped being a dog,’ The Grand Admiral says quietly. ‘Or maybe, it was the humans who had stopped being what they had claimed to be first.’

Thrawn’s body was lying in tranquil repose on the marble slab, arms unmoving from where they had been positioned by the deck officers. And of, the animal there was no trace.

* * *

It had been during the month long offensive against the New Republic that had led Thrawn to turn the _Chimaera_ towards the dead planet. It had once been part of the old Core Worlds, the Grand Admiral had explained, before every inhabitant on that world had become extinct and over the millennia its name had been lost from history.

In the long days, the troops were trained in mock combat simulations. There were no nights because for every hour of the day of the galactic standard calendar year the sun shone beat down from above into the toxic atmosphere, challenging the homeostatic systems of the _Chimaera_ which reflected the ultraviolet glare.

And, every day, or so Pellaeon had thought, Grand Admiral Thrawn had been making battle plans.

He found Thrawn later that evening when the Grand Admiral had quietly slipped away from examining Noghri topsoil projections.

It had been true that the atmosphere was toxic. Pellaeon had had to wear an oxygen filter and a proper interweaved suit to exclude the radiation. The sky had been the same shade of unsophisticated dilute blue as from the ship projections, the ground the same sandy brown.

He’d found Thrawn standing inside the enormous halls of a tripartite structure. The top part had long since dislodged, collapsing into the second story and bits of rock had spread around the roof. And rather than admiring the central statue – humanoid and carved from stone, the Grand Admiral was standing in the eaves.

‘This civilisation’s art?’ Pellaeon said, trying to decipher the ornate lettering. It was still legible, despite the fading and perhaps Thrawn was able to read it.

‘This civilisation’s demise.’ A marginal pause. ‘The script by itself is twenty thousand years old, Captain.’

Pellaeon was examining the palm of his interleaved suit. ’I must have touched something by accident,’ he’d confessed.

It was a bright green patch of moss, similar to one of the paintings he’d thought he’d seen by the entrance. And although Thrawn’s expression had betrayed no alarm, they’d left immediately at a punishing pace. By the time they’d reached the _Chimaera_ the moss was encroaching on Pellaeon’s visor and Thrawn had even suggested that the good captain decontaminate three times – Pellaeon had decontaminated a fourth just to be safe – and the suit had been abandoned on the dead world rather than destroyed.

It was only later when the repulsorlifts had engaged that Pellaeon realised how close he’d been dying. And, as for the Grand Admiral, he’d never brought up the subject of the Unknown Region within earshot of Pellaeon again.

* * *

The room was filled with unpacked recycled boxes and a single wiry light suspended precariously from the low hanging ceiling - a small hub of disorganisation onboard the _Chimaera_ where it wasn’t tolerated anywhere else. Some of the boxes had sifted away from the table.

‘How did you manage to come aboard?’

She shrugged. ‘Like every good investment, I suppose there is a time, place and the factor of luck. I wouldn’t have cold called if I had realised that it was such an inconvenient time.’ The timepiece on her wrist was ticking, a sound magnified in the room.

‘And you’re sure, Ardiff, that she had no identity papers with her?’

‘None sir.’

‘Then where did you come from?’

‘It’s a small planet, you’ve probably never heard of it.’

They had, of course, on the physical star charts on Miss Kapoor’s ship. She’d called them posters of Yorkshire and Earth and she claimed to have been from a family on Jupiter running a small mining operation for diamonds on the gaseous giant.

The co-ordinates corresponded to nowhere, or rather they had pointed to a sector of the galaxy that had suffered shrinkage when a neighbouring event horizon had drawn in all the neighbouring planets into its territory. All the stars and planets that Miss Kapoor could name were lost, several million years ago.  
  
Ardiff was flummoxed. ‘What are chances?’

Million to one, Pellaeon was thinking, like the irrelevant malfunction of the slave circuits linking the Liberation to the Nemesis – million to one. And yet, that could have proved decisive at Bilbringi.

* * *

Man, girl and dog watched the last of the blue neutrino flares finally die from the starboard viewscreen of their vessel – firmly anchored by the gravity wells - as the last photons of energy were sucked into the half width black hole in space along with Grand Admiral’s casket.

And he finally turned to the girl and dog and said – ‘You’re not a journalist at all, are you?’ He’s giving into sentiment, giving Disra more ammunition for the eventual impeachment but somehow he can’t find it himself to care.

‘Only sometimes,’ she shrugs and with a minimal movement shrugged off the camera and the winking lens off her shoulder by the strap. ‘As a gesture of my good faith.’

‘Those pictures wouldn’t have developed properly anyway.’

‘I know. It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?’

Jamais’ tail was wedged flat on the ground laid firm, the old dog unmoving. And the watch upon Miss Kapoor’s wrist was fractured in a million ways, a spider web of cracks leading inwards towards the singularity and yet it still ticked.

* * *

The Grand Admiral is manipulating the holographic tactical display in the medbay of all places. Flash chips magnified the arrays at a light touch and Pellaeon can see planets, stars and ships etched into the holograms, before they were dismissed with a gesture.

‘You were bleeding onto the floor quite profusely,’ Thrawn observes. ‘The imprints suggested the canines of a dog, to be accurate.’

‘It couldn’t have been helped.’ Pellaeon said, awkwardly. ‘Jamais didn’t want to leave. You wouldn’t happen to object, would you? To more animals?’

The Grand Admiral outwardly tolerated the presence of the ysalmari, but it was more than that, something about his emulation of the Myrkr habitat that extended more than artistic hubris.

‘He didn’t want to leave your side.’ Thrawn corrected automatically with a subtle twist of the lips.

There was a silence for a moment. ‘Like you.’

He’s briefly spared a glance, red and searching. ‘You are my protégé, Pellaeon. When I am gone-‘

‘Stop,’ Pellaeon said in a voice full of sadness to a room in which he was once again alone.

* * *

Polaris Minor was a large planet with an entirely underwater ecosystem and an entirely marine population. It was the home of the Laplace Operetta, a massive substructure come auditorium drilled into the bedrock. The locals called it the Lungs, because the rock was porous containing natural alcoves large enough that anyone from the most sessile to the largest citizen could find an alcove comfortable to enough to fit them.

For the agoraphobic Pellaeon, it was the unfortunate opportunity to sit on the inside of the aquarium rather than on the outside it. Sure, the curtains and the plush chairs seemed solid enough but the illusion was spoiled whenever the macroscopic eye of a giant sentient squid drifted past the backdrop which was often.

‘I’m surprised you’re not still in jail.’

The conman shrugged self deprecatingly. ‘I guess all the ladies and gents of the jury decided to go easy on me.’

And Pellaeon, lightly, ‘I heard that the judge who let you off was the same one that let Moff Disra out on bail.’

‘That worm.’ Flim’s tone was dark.

‘You’re the only one I can imagine wriggling on the hook.’

Flim laughed, but his eyes were curiously unfathomable. ‘Well my career is destroyed anyway, Captain. A conman can’t be a conman if everyone on the Holonet knows his face, name and reputation. And I’m not sure I want to go back after the last stunt either.’ He twisted in his seat, a note of helplessness entering his voice that no one else could hear since they were in a private box. ‘You, better than anyone know that I don’t want to be a martyr.’

He wanted to be saved. Pellaeon couldn’t even save someone who was dying right in front of him.

On the stage, the pale dancers revolved once more in a slow cyclical loop.

‘I understand,’ Pellaeon outlined his need for Star Destroyer access codes.

And Flim nodded, listening thoughtfully with the grace of Thrawn’s manner that Tierce could never have hoped to emulate, with a grace that made Pellaeon feel ashamed for his desperation and for his having failed Grand Admiral Thrawn.

* * *

The Corellian northshore. The wind blew through Pellaeon’s garden. Once, it had been a wasteland where traders dumped there goods and a few sparse shrubs had grown but with careful tending, tilling, fertilisation and new top soil it had grown into a maze of rosebushes lining the white pebbled paths. At intervals, fountains sprang and two open gazebos sat stolidly overlooking either pole of the lake.

For Pellaeon’s sixtieth, the gardens had been converted into a celebration of ribbons and parades – the children had strung up a maypole across the South Garden. The former General Iblis and Senator Organa Solo had been attendance plus children. Karrde had been there too – and surprisingly a skulking and reluctant Flim had accompanied him.

‘Karrde offered me free passage.’ Somehow Pellaeon had known that Flim had wanted to make amends, however brief, in his own funny way.

They had all left, after the event of course.

Jamais had left him too. He felt Jamais’ absence the most in a way. The dog had spent longer and longer away, as if by reducing his contact with Pellaeon he could make the other miss him less.

There was a problem with both of Jamais’ hearts, was what the doctors had said.

It had taken Pellaeon an excruciatingly long time to identify the path of Jamais’ daily pilgrimage, but when he’d finally deduced the destination, it was obvious.

Jamais had wanted to lie down next to the gravity wells of the grounded _Chimaera_ beyond the heart of the maze and beside them he had died, not a week before he was due for surgery.

* * *

‘I forgot you kept Vornskr.’

The smuggler shrugged sadly. ‘It was purely selfish I assure you. But Sturm and Drang kept me company for a long time after Mara left.’

‘Did you ever love her?’

Karrde turned his coolly intelligent eyes on Pellaeon.

‘Did you ever love Thrawn, Pellaeon? If so, you know exactly how I feel.’

* * *

Shortly after Karrde had lifted off – cleaving through the sundry clouds – Pellaeon was walking back along the long straight path that led away from the rose garden, intending to maybe reclaim a position in his favourite chair. He pulled his jacket tight and kept walking suspecting from the cold humidity that it would soon rain.

There was a man, walking the opposite direction past the carefully tended mauve tinged Corwellian rose bushes with a sleek dark haired dog that was no longer rheumatic and no longer unhealthy. They were heading towards the maze.

Pellaeon paused. ‘Grand Admiral.’

Gone was the white seamless uniform with the burnished gold epaulets. Thrawn had quite sensibly exchanged both for a more anonymous dark jacket.

‘No need to be so formal, Captain,’ Thrawn said, inclining his glowing red eyes gently. ‘I was just admiring your garden. Although if I could make one constructive suggestion as a friend, rather than your commanding officer –‘

‘Certainly.’ Pellaeon said immediately.

‘I’d suggest a statue. A plaster bust here and there could spruce up the place. Your gardening is quite remarkable.’

‘Thankyou.’ Pellaeon stood a while, oblivious to the rain. ‘Disra didn’t seem to think so.’

‘No?’

‘I think the old snake is disappointed that my ambassadorial appointment fell through. He still considers it a lost opportunity for him.’ Pellaeon said quietly, smiling with half remembrance.

‘I see,’ Thrawn’s tone was grave. ‘I suppose you shouldn’t be surprised that he reaches for everything and anything that benefits him. You, on the other hand,’

‘Lack ambition.’

The Grand Admiral shakes his head. ‘Have ambition tempered by honour. It’s your most attractive trait. Never lose faith in yourself, Pellaeon.’ He smiled, a subtle but genuine smile touching his lips and his eyes and together with Jamais he left, travellers at the crossroad.

And Pellaeon returns the smile to the open air.

* * *

It’s something he’s kept in an old fashioned envelope underneath the drawer with his gardening tools and the blaster.

Miss Kapoor’s decades old camera, still on the red and yellow nylon strap coated in a thin layer of garden soil. It weighed and functioned approximately the same as an ordinary camera which had stumped Pellaeon for the longest time.

But if he unscrews the lens under it lies a clear jewel, clear so as not to interrupt the function of the camera and prismatic so as to direct the light appropriately.

He lifts it up. It’s lighter than he expects but it is startlingly cold to the touch.

* * *

Twenty yards long and twelve yards across, the _Jonah_ was an intimidating monolith of a steamship. It outwardly looked the part too, the faded yellow green brass, the vents where steam should bellow and chug.

‘We’re home, Jamais,’ Anji says softly.

And the ship, it hadn’t always belonged to her but that didn’t matter now as she crossed the threshold into singularity.

* * *

‘What you’re proposing, Captain, would ruin the synchronicity of our hyperspace jump, at the benefit of avoiding an incident that has a million to one chance of occurring and would have a minor impact on our overall strategy.’

If Thrawn had been Vader, Pellaeon would have been strangled and then thrown on top of a pile of corpses for insubordination.

But he wasn’t, so Pellaeon looked Thrawn straight in the eye and said the speech that he’d had decades to prepare for, ‘The Katana fleet incident had also a million to one chance of occurring, but it occurred just the same. Similarly, there are several occurrences in the history of conflict that had a cumulative impact on the outcome, for example the Battle of Endor.’

Regardless of his lack of talent, regardless of his hands shaking from pure stress, surely foresight could count for something in this grand tapestry of existence –

‘Sir,’ an officer on deck was reporting, ‘Incoming communications about the Noghri status.’

And then the dawning horror drowned out everything in Pellaeon’s mind.

‘Pellaeon?’ Thrawn was saying after a belated pause, utterly oblivious to how much danger he was in. ‘Are you going to stand like that forever?’

He must have shifted his position, unconsciously to block the distance between Rukh and Thrawn, thus depriving his commanding officer of a clear view of the rest of the bridge.

‘If I have to.’ Pellaeon said grimly and pointed his blaster at The Grand Admiral’s head. And then, for the first time in anyone’s living memory, the full gamut of emotions of betrayal, shame and finally confusion ran across Thrawn’s face, but still he maintains eye contact.

‘At least tell me why.’

But Pellaeon simply ignores him, pushing him to one side and using the temporary confusion that Rukh must be feeling to his advantage he turns the action into a double handed shove pushing Thrawn sideways out of immediate harm’s way and himself between Rukh and his target.

It doesn’t go as planned, because Rukh’s knife instead buries itself in Pellaeon’s intervening hand, over where Thrawn’s heart should be, causing white flashes of pain to erupt in his vision. The Noghri tries to slide it in further at an angle but Pellaeon’s other hand, blaster abandoned had appeared around the blood slicked blade, grabbing the knife by the edge and deflects the force of it sideways against his own bones.

Rukh bypassed the problem altogether by slamming him to one side but Pellaeon held on against all the odds dragging him down with all his weight, until the Noghri pushed hard enough that Pellaeon’s skull hit the floor.

He lay there stunned, unable to get up.

Someone had raised the alarm. Pellaeon thought that it might have been Thrawn but his face looked too calm to have shouted for the alarm and Rukh grabbed him by the neck, but before he could completely strangle the life out of him, the bloody knife that had been jammed through Pellaeon’s hand ended its circuit through the room buried itself in Rukh’s back.

The Noghri quivered and then fell.

The Grand Admiral was wheezing, trying to make himself heard, but not before Ardiff had decided that Pellaeon was a danger that needed to be ended.

Through the dead silence, Pellaeon’s board wouldn’t stop pinging.

* * *

 

‘Ardiff,’ The Grand Admiral said, normally smooth voice toneless. He hadn’t moved from where he was sitting beside Pellaeon. ‘Please pick up the blaster and examine the contents of the chamber.’

‘It’s empty, sir. No charges.’

‘Of course,’ Thrawn’s voice was too soft and bitter as the lights of Bilbringi strobed outside, thinking about how he’d won the battle but lost it all. 


	2. Side Thrawn

Tierce presumes that the recall from the _Relentless_ has something or the other to do with High General Hestiv. The man had never quite seen eye to eye with Disra and had a liberal inclination that was unpopular amongst the Imperials. The more likely hypothesis was it was to do with Captain Pellaeon’s unfortunate demise.

He turns the corridor smartly into Ardiff barring the way. They stared eye to eye for a moment.

‘I suppose you are my new minder, Ardiff,’ Tierce commented. Dark circles had drawn themselves around the other man’s eyes.

‘You don’t have clearance.’

Major Tierce smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and pushes past Ardiff. ‘There’s no need, the Grand Admiral will recognise me just fine.’

He opens the door to a wall to floor view of the stable orbit around Yaga Minor. Tierce could make out the lapis blue of the oceans and the mottled grey-green landmasses that ringed the surface, while stars winked on and off in the darkness of space.

The Grand Admiral himself was reclining in a chair, chin pinched between a thumb and forefinger. He looked up when Tierce entered.

‘You’re late, Major.’ Thrawn stated smoothly. The data he was examining spun hypnotically in a choreographed spiral as he dismissed the projections. No art, of course, because neither Thrawn nor Tierce made any art of their own so attempting to look for it was a waste of time.

‘I was delayed by Ardiff,’ Tierce said tartly. ‘No doubt you have that dog practically eating out of your hands, starving for whatever bone of affection you throw him.’

‘Language, Major.’ As always, Thrawn’s tone was modulated in a way Tierce’s rarely was. Surely, the Grand Admiral was wondering how the blueprint of his own mind, so carefully laid could result in such a prodigal child. ‘Ardiff is reliable officer who doesn’t deserve the insults you throw at him.’

Or did he? Ardiff had seemed tired. More tired than deck officer should be. ‘And you’re not above petty personal vengeance, no matter what your reports say,’ Tierce replied, matching the calm tone with one of his own. ‘So you made him run up and down the ship.’

Thrawn’s fingers had curled in on themselves subtly, increasing the pressure they had placed on the fabric of his uniform but now they unwound. The sides of his mouth were pointing down.

‘No, I’m not,’ The Grand Admiral said, at length to Tierce’s surprise, turning his head a fraction in the Major’s direction. ‘I’m not flawless like people seem to think I am. I have a threshold and Ardiff crossed it.’

‘Was it worth it?’ Tierce said in a low voice. He could have sneered, but his voice was entirely neutral.

Thrawn’s fury flashed through his eyes like thousands of hot ruby flares coming down on Tierce’s head, but when he spoke his voice was perfunctory and controlled. ‘Major, inform Ardiff that he can retire early for the night.’

Tierce didn’t dare to press him any further. He smartly turned on his heels and did what he was bid.

* * *

When he reflected on the event, he wasn’t even entirely sure of whether he’d even spoken up for Ardiff or whether the outcome had been driven by his contempt for the man. His own motives were a mystery with no clear logical answer for his behaviour.

But he had discovered a chink in Thrawn’s impenetrable armour, that much was certain. Something that would finally make him valuable in Moff Disra’s eyes. But when the petulant Moff had finally rung in, Tierce hadn’t mentioned the incident.

He’d left all the details out.

* * *

All that had been promised for the acting troupe was the promise of increasingly fictional gems from the Vega locus. The lines alone for the two parts he’d played – the Emperor and the tragedian – had eaten up several hundred hours in memorisation.

Flim was not a happy man. And tonight there was a man staring out of his mirror which wasn’t him. The man has been there for a while on an on off schedule but Flim hadn’t noticed him until today which made him feel doubly unhappy.

Flim checks that he hasn’t spontaneously turned into Commander Pellaeon. Then he also checks that the girl – Parkfield – next door hasn’t rewired it with a projector as a joke.

But unfortunately he finds nothing that can explain why a man who was supposed to be dead on the HoloNet reports. Corpses didn’t just walk away. They even had the body and this one looked like he was a few minutes away from becoming the body.

The con artist puts together one and one and gets three.

‘Trust me, Flim, you are not going to like this explanation.’ The dead man rasps through his unconventional means of communication. ‘But you are the only person who can help me.’

* * *

Life Day was being celebrated on the streets of Coruscant.

And Thrawn had drawn the short straw by needing to be present in the holiday period. It was a flagrant disregard of Imperial Edicts, of course, but Thrawn’s apathy to the practice was legendary. That and the small but somewhat valuable insight it offered into Wookie culture.

Thrawn stood at vigil in the middle of the parade, neither face nor body expressions indicating anything except attentiveness to the red robed Hrithopasse’s proclamations. Underneath the epaulets and uniform he was sweltering but outwardly cool and controlled, even when his turn came to be showered by powdered Orga root, while the Wookie showed only discomfort.

One of the ensigns in an olive uniform was struggling out of the crowd with an elaborately carved box. ‘One of the locals wouldn’t let me leave without it. Quite insistent.’

‘It’s fine Rhodan,’ The Grand Admiral replied calmly walking away. ‘You may leave it with the Consult.’

‘- It was ordered a year ago. Apparently paid for in advance. For a box of chocolates.’

‘Oh no,’ Thrawn replied, curiosity instantly lighting his eyes. He picks up the box and shakes it, eliciting a light rattling noise. ‘Have you ever heard of the story of the Emperor and the con man, Ensign?’

A shake of the head.

‘It concerns a man who claimed to have discovered the secret of transmuting carbon into gold. He became rich very quickly and the Emperor offered to buy his stocks of gold. Foolish and very greedy, he sold all of it at once. Rather than using scanners which the man had learned to fool, the Emperor instead ordered that all the apparent gold be sunken into water and the displacement was compared to his stocks of genuine bullion. The man was drowned in the difference.’

Ensign Rhodan audibly swallowed but Thrawn had picked up the box again, noting the light rattle and brought it down on the table top. The cheap wood easily inverted, bending without breaking.

The chocolates in the loosely packed upper compartment fell out first and then the diamonds in the more compact lower compartment fell out, each jewel identical to the gem found on Pellaeon. None of them were cold.

‘It’s a lesson that the opposite can also be true. Well done Ensign.’

‘Thankyou, sir.’ The other man said, recovering.

Thrawn said. ‘Please in instruct Catrallis to conduct a four by five analysis on all of the gems we’ve recovered plus an additional one I will be sending him. I’ll be expecting the results later today, but inform him that there will be no penalty for a slower and more careful analysis.’ A pause. ‘And take a chocolate. I think you’ll find that they aren’t poisoned.’

They were Pellaeon’s favourite brand after all.

* * *

Coruscant and its edifices gleamed on in the cityscape distance – a vast matrix of durasteel and concrete that was a placard to tourism and economy. The Intersection was a gambling venture nestled solidly in the metal landscape, a level 1000 gambling establishment that boasted all the latest in comfort and security.

Slot machines pinged at regular intervals along the walls, credits were rolled and scraped the old fashioned way by droid automatons and warm mood lighting shone from the crevasses. It was the sort of place you would expect to see ladies with coiffed hair and exotic dresses roll up with tuxedoed men and blow kisses from circular lips which were then waved to bypasses.

To be fair to him, Flim hadn’t been expecting to win big. He’d attached the cards to the ceiling with expensive microfilm, but the four eyed Talz with his translator in attendance he had been playing against had kept betting more and more in an attempt to win back his winnings.

Which had ultimately landed him in trouble when a nosy clerk had done a little investigation into his backstory.

One of the barrel chested guards were advancing, kneading his fist into a meaty hand. ‘Sir, on behalf of this establishment you will be detained until further notice. Do not resist or you will find the experience _very unpleasant_.’

The barrel chested guards were advancing, from all directions, cutting off his means of escape.

Flim did the only thing he could think of and bolted in the opposite direction. A couple’s meal went flying in the faces of the one’s who’d ordered it, a Sabacc game was disrupted by the activation of detonators he’d placed along the frames of the window.

Peering down from the floor above, there was someone standing on his floating skiff. In fact, there were a series of someones spread out in a thin line.

The Grand Admiral’s gleaming red eyes were the easiest to make out, along with his cold tone of voice. ‘Would you like to come down from there, Flim?’ A pause. ‘I think you might find it preferable to being smeared on the streets of Coruscant.’ 

* * *

 

Tierce remembers reading a paper on Chiss biology. Dry and technical, it discussed pineal glands and circadian cycles. Their lives were slightly shorter than a humans, the metabolic rate faster and the sleep cycles shorter.

The Grand Admiral was sleeping now, head depressed between his hands as the shuttle took them to where the _Chimaera_ sat, bathed in the light of a cold star. He had finally petered out after the agonisingly slow case of Flim, the Talz and the casino coffers and the systematic search of Flim’s living quarters which had revealed nothing.

‘You’ve thought about it too, Ardiff,’ Tierce commented unconsciously tapping his fingernails. ‘We interrogate Flim together and save the Grand Admiral the trouble of collecting the data. Where are you going?’

Ardiff had collected some of the biscuits on a plate. ‘Doing things in my own way. Somehow I doubt the Grand Admiral is going to be happy if he realises that someone forgot to feed Flim.’

Tierce stared darkly after the door closed. He’d preferred someone competent to be managing the Braxant Sector Fleet and by extension – the whole Empire. Two people fit the criteria: himself and Thrawn. No politicians like Disra. No dim, but well meaning officers like Ardiff.

A notification wrote large on Tierce’s datapad – and he reached over to delete it before anyone could read it.

* * *

Here were exotic blooms, the deadly _nepanth_ flowers of sol’aleres, the wild ivory mustangs that sat in the marshes of the core planets and the lush heart like blooms that settled on the north axis of Myrkr and only grew in deep frost. Other blooms too, brilliant golden wreaths that chimed when they were shaken.   
  
The two sides of the chessboard were evenly matched. White was more aggressive, occupying the board in a phalanx whilst Black was more defensive but the King had been safely castled.

Thrawn’s fingers were steepled. On his right sat his takings – two knights and one rook, matched against Pellaeon’s.

‘It’s been a while since we talked like this.’

‘I’ve been quite careful since the C’boath incident.’ Thrawn told him. ‘I’ve learned not to underestimate the Jedi.’

‘And so you created all this, all to keep me out.’

Pellaeon waved to the white walls of Thrawn’s private Jericho which rose as far up into the dawn as they flew down into the mirror floor. If one looked carefully at the walls the art of the Chiss covered the lower portion of the walls before the Grand Admiral’s interest faded out into the smooth walls.

‘You walked right in through the open door. Do you have so little faith in me, Captain?’

Pellaeon studied Thrawn’s face carefully, but he couldn’t even get through the impenetrable barrier surrounding his surface thoughts. ‘The fact that any kind of door existed suggests that your barriers were blown wide open. Who was it?’

There was silence, filled only with the surrounds of whatever passed for breathing in this place. The outer walls of the fortress were disintegrating too but still the pristine garden that the Grand Admiral had kept for his Captain was untouched. Thrawn had so much pride, even when he was fighting an unwinnable battle.

‘Major Tierce drugged me,’ Thrawn admitted. ‘And I let him. Disra would have sent someone else. And after him, another assassin. I’m a destabilising factor, someone the Republic fears and as long as I exist there can never be truly be peace.’

There was something else he was hiding, buried so deep that he’d built his walls high and wide to keep Pellaeon from finding out, that he’d diverted all his attention to protecting at the expense of everything else even as his other creations died of neglect.

And still the flowers he’d made for Pellaeon endured, the garden he’d built to remember Pellaeon by just as Pellaeon had built a garden to remember him by.

* * *

In the days of Palpatine’s reign there had been plenty of people desperate enough to try and kill him. People with motives that were impossible to understand and completely illogical. People who thought that they could get past the Empire’s coteries of elite guards, his Hand, the Empire and the Emperor’s own Sith mastery.

The original Tierce had been good at his job – which had essentially boiled down to hunting down and killing frightened animals which he’d probably thought was an honourable occupation.

But he wasn’t Tierce, he was a clone with someone else’s memory and Thrawn’s eclectic clarity of mind. So Original Tierce couldn’t be anything more than a butcher bound to his own narrow-minded view of what was honourable and as for his memories it was nothing more than history, a bank for him to draw upon as reference when he willed it.

 _He_ could be so much more. He could be a mathematician, scientist, inventor and scholar instead of hating the world that had made him into its shadow, holding a terrorist’s weapon – a vibro-shiv fitted with a cortosis-weave that he planned to stab into Thrawn’s neck where the sluggish pulse still beat.

So what was Tierce? Man or butterfly, fish or fowl?

Tierce was too pragmatic to wax philosophical about it – or maybe he was just more impulsive. He jammed the vibro-shiv through the table as a succinct reminder to Thrawn that he should be dead and left.

* * *

The _Ozymandias_ buckled as ice blue light flares from the dying cold sun as it reached out to cannibalise the two ships in static orbit around it.

Flim runs to the nearest intercom channel and jams his fingers straight in and activates the relay. And he makes an effortless transition stepping into the role of Thrawn and orders the terrified crew of the _Chimaera_ to back off from the sun in calming mellifluous tones.

And he steps off the stage again, completely uncertain, terrified and lugging the unconscious Ardiff behind with him. But he makes it into the escape pod, with one of limp arm supported by his shoulders and he clocks the jettison, just as the shuttle falls to pieces.

* * *

Black blobs of fluid pass in front of him. The grav stat on the wall occasionally flashes on and off, lighting up the fluid.

The gravity compensation has failed along with the sublight engines and the lights as he’d known they would. The emergency circuits make an effort a while longer, but they short out before long as the last of the power is automatically redirected into life support.

The _Chimaera_ had borne the brunt of the gamma radiation, but the shields on the craft would survive and enable the craft to limp away, crew protected. The _Ozymandia_ s, on the other hand, wouldn’t have, it shared the base architecture with the _Chimaera_ only as far as its control room. But if it was a prop, it was an incredibly self sufficient and equipped with a preprogramed onboard navigational route.

Thrawn had reconstructed the scene as best as he can, him as the anchor on the bridge of the ship in that same base architecture as the control room taken from the _Chimaera_. And he had the larger body of diamonds on board, too, drawing as a tractor beam did the lesser to the whole.

And he closes his eyes again.

* * *

[A HoloNet set, very clean white floors and a comfortable red brown couch for a Flim fresh out of the medbay to recline on. He is calm, or it might have just been one of the soporifics that the doctors had convinced him to take.]

THE JOURNALIST: And what do you think about the death of the Grand Admiral?

FLIM: (Laughing) Why don’t you ask Parck about that? He’s the one who’s convinced that Thrawn will be back in ten years.

[Flash to PARCK raising his hands and trying to ward off the drones before returning to the studio. Flim looks up.]

THE JOURNALIST [voice]: I’m afraid that Parck wasn’t available to comment on that particular story, Flim.

FLIM: [A long pause.] He’s probably out there alive somewhere. It’s a big galaxy.

[AND CUT TO -]

[A victorious, DISRA hailing the crowd with black gloved hands wearing an urbane smile. In small white caps below him runs the headline – Visionary or Expansionary? All New Republic controlled planets secede to the Empire, the Grand Moff announces to the Imperial Court that he intends to “expand beyond the borders” of known space and denies plans for renewed dictatorship.]

* * *

Take a traveller from a timeline he had lived through and place him in one which was familiar but subtly different. Almost kill him off and then place him several years in the future. The result was a Pellaeon living through a horrible sense of Thrawn déjà vu.

He scouts out a secure facility on Coruscant, faking pseudonyms and identity cards. It wouldn’t fool anyone, of course. It’s hard to conceal someone both Chiss and on the brink of death.

On the second day, Bel Iblis shows up. The General takes one wry look at Thrawn and says, ‘I’m no medical expert, but if you want your friend to live, he’ll need to be moved to a major medcentre.’

The doctors had agreed as such.

‘You’re an honourable opponent, Iblis, but what guarantee do I have that you aren’t going to use this to your political advantage?’ Pellaeon says coldly.

‘I can only give you my word.’ Iblis had replied. But then he said over his shoulder, ‘But I am surprised. Why haven’t you reported Thrawn’s survival to your Empire yet? Surely that would give him the best chance of survival.’

Better Iblis’ care than Thrawn dying, Pellaeon had thought and chafed. It was true that he’d become less naïve from the decades of loss that he’d lived but it had also made him desperate. And then he looks at the comatose Thrawn and wonders not for the last time how he had been brought forward a second time.

* * *

It was thirty days until the Grand Admiral woke up in this best care that Iblis could find. Thirty maddening days of wondering whether his condition would deteriorate or who else Iblis had told or who had managed to figure out that he was still alive. Thirty days of wondering whether the Tierce that Thrawn had reached across space and time to show him would return. Thirty days of wondering if Iblis would conveniently have the biggest threat to the New Republic killed.

He’d been sitting in one of the corners of the bed when the Grand Admiral’s heartbeat and electrolytes goes into complete overdrive before stabilising.

Then there’s a small movement of the eyelids.

‘Sir,’ Pellaeon said.

‘Just Thrawn or Mitth’raw’nuruodo should do, Captain.’ Thrawn replied in a voice in a disused voice, completely different from his usual cultured tones said. ‘You’ve certainly saved my life enough times to earn it.’

And in a voice, as steady as he could muster, Pellaeon replied, ‘You’re not dying.’ Which elicits a small smile from the other.

‘Of course not Pellaeon.’ Thrawn concurs with a small smile. ‘I’m not completely incompetent you know.’

* * *

The _Medea_ – the tourist cruise ship – rigs up its solar sails. They’re long triangles which are supposed to help propel the vessel or navigate like a sextant. It’s not so much an artistic statement as an indication that the designer had no idea what they were doing.

‘I’m expecting this ship to collapse in on me.’ Pellaeon mutters. The other guests were mostly on the foredeck, tussling over binoculars from which to view the stars. ‘A cruise ship. Iblis is half out of his mind.’

Thrawn seems amused by the prospect, eyes glowing slits, hand resting on his chin. ‘Well, if that happens I’m sure that Disra will only be too eager to pick us up.’

‘Is that why you told Iblis that you couldn’t guarantee that you wouldn’t move against him?’

‘I gave the General an honest answer. I can’t predict what action I’ll need to take in the future. What are your thoughts?’

A deep breath. ‘I think that you’re thinking of going back. Iblis implied as much. With you gone, Disra has unrestricted access to all the resources of the New Republic and the Empire. Are you alright?’

Thrawn had passed a hand over his face in exhaustion. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a short rest.’

* * *

The solar sails had dumped them on a planet Pellaeon called Heaven. It was a lush underdeveloped backwater planet, brimming with billowing white clouds and copses of trees and plentiful lakes teeming with wildlife and no predators since the initial colonists had probably driven them to extinction.

And the Governor had been Iblis’ friend of course. Thrawn was several kilometres north of the peaceful villa on the Steppes, an ironic name for a mountainous terrain that was all vertical.

‘You’re not admiring the art? Riose apparently has a great gallery a few kilometres south of here, you know.’ Pellaeon said, crunching through the soil. Thrawn’s new outfit was as prescribed the doctor, a loose gown to avoid putting pressure on his wounds, complete with a white sash down the front. He looked like an escaped outpatient and there was some initial startled guilt on his face before it was wiped away.

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ The former Grand Admiral replied laconically.

“Everything” was a beehive suspended between a copse of trees and a remarkable number of killer insects crawling about.

‘I’m not exactly sure if you being here is the best for your health.’

‘There’s nothing to be worried about. I may still be recuperating but an insect won’t be the death of me.’ Then, a brief red look flicked sideways to assess the reaction. ‘Very well, Pellaeon. Let’s find those art galleries together.’

* * *

Lying at the end of the short circuit they’d made was none other than an exact reconstruction of Pellaeon’s rose garden. It was by the banks of a lake which ended where the sky began, remarkably like the gleaming shorelines that sometimes graced Thrawn’s mental landscape.

Pellaeon touches every rose he passes by, just to make sure that they were real. He withdraws his hands before they can get caught on the thorns. ‘I’m guessing you had a chat to the architect of _The Medea_.’

‘Quite the horticulturists, Skalians, but thoroughly impractical architects. They build their sails modelled on flowers.’ He turns his head fractionally, and says softly. ‘And in this case, they built it modelled it on my memory of your design.’

‘No statues, though,’ Pellaeon replies idly, glancing down at the isles of roses.

‘No.’ Thrawn confirmed. ‘I didn’t want to desecrate your artistic intentions.’

‘And us? We’re here, altering the meaning of the garden with every footprint and every hour spent here, would that be an improvement or desecration?’ He waved at the surroundings.

‘A definite improvement.’ He had closed the distance between them. ‘What is art if you can’t appreciate it?’ Thrawn said, gently touching Pellaeon’s face with the back of one hand. ‘What is art, if you can’t touch it?’

Pellaeon’s fingers had closed around Thrawn’s.

Underneath the pale moon they were kissing.

 


	3. Epilogue

The _Relentless_ crawls through the edge of space.

‘Message from Carvall,’ Captain Drusan reports flicking through the datapad. ‘They found something.’ He extrapolates the image , performing a closer zoom on the tactical, enlarging the contours of the planetary surface with a few flicks. Expanses of maroon soil spread thinly across the craters.

‘Anything unusual in the atmosphere?

‘Nothing apart from the usual trace nitrogen,’ the ensign reports, swivelling on his chair and leaning on his right elbow. ‘Carbon dioxide is clear too, but the oxygen sats are a bit below normal. No life signs.’

Ardiff thought about it for a moment. ‘Has Tierce shown up?’

‘He’s still down with the Aing-Tii with Car’das according to the transmission from years back. We lost all contact with him after that.’ Drusan wrinkles his nose.

‘Flim,’ Ardiff says. ‘Do you have anything to report?’

‘Canary in a coalmine reporting in, your Excellency’ Flim says ironically, moving in gravity that only consisted of four fifths of Coruscant gravity. ‘I’m sure you have many people more qualified and more likely to survive than this lowly conscript.’

Ardiff’s sigh riffled through the entire comm network. ‘I really do appreciate your work you know.’

There’s no response for the long time. And finally –

Drusan reports grimly. ‘Guess we finally found out what happened to your predecessor.’ The figure on screen was magnified.

Flim was babbling incoherently through the channel and Ardiff found that every hair had stood up on the back of his neck.

Moff Disra had been iced from head to toe. He was engulfed in blue white brilliance that hurt to look at. On closer inspection grotesque spikes of it were protruding from him in unnatural intervals, punching holes in his body through which his organs were visible. His mouth was perpetually frozen open in a rictus scream.

‘He’s still alive,’ One crew member said faintly. ‘Look at his heart.’ Someone threw up.

‘All exploratory teams are to withdraw immediately to the _Relentless_ effective immediately.’ Moff Ardiff ordered.

* * *

What a stupid dog it was, it wouldn’t stop crying until all the worlds’ oceans were filled with its tears.

* * *

Side by side, hand in hand, the two of them were walking barefoot along the alien shore. From time to time, the tides would travel up to wash out the evidence of their footprints.

But if the water washed away it too quickly, Pellaeon would sometimes backtrack and remake their steps as Thrawn waited for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Jamais and Anji Kapoor are borrowed from Stephen Cole's novel Timeless.  
> The running production title of this fanfic is The Adventure of the White Diamond (in reference to Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle)


End file.
